REVIEWED BY KEITH MACKIE
When I first read a review of The Star Fraction by Ken McLeod I had to go out and get a copy of it immediately. Described as the first Trotskyist science-fiction novel, it is set in the future, but is an allegory on present-day Earth politics, and particularly of left politics.
The world in the 2040s is fragmented after World War Three into many different mini-states and ruled by proxy by the US/UN world government. For instance, Kazakhstan has broken up into several parts, one of them being the Technical and Scientific Workers Republic. Britain, formerly a republic but now under the reinstalled Hanoverian regime, is Balkanised into city-states after the US invasion at the end of World War Three.
Moh Kohn, whose parents were killed in the war, traces his father's Trotskyist roots (he had been a member of the Workers' Power Party). He discovers his father's legacy — a computer virus programmed to trigger a worldwide revolution through the internet — and meets Trotsky in virtual reality. The book is littered with one-liners and anecdotes that will be familiar to activists on the left.
One character, in true Life of Brian-style, browses the net for left-wing web sites and comes across the Fourth International, the Fifth International, the Lost International and the International Committee for the Reconstruction of the Libertarian International. There is also a character called Bernstein, who earns a living selling left-wing memorabilia, and is the only living person able to explain the splits.
McLeod's second novel, The Stone Canal, is part of the same future history, half set in the present and half in the future. It is the story of an anarchist, Jon Wilde, who founds the Space and Freedom Movement at the time of humanity's expansion into space, promoting his vision of anarchism in artificial space habitats. His ally turned adversary is Dave Reid, a Trotskyist who becomes a capitalist, whom he encounters again in a future incarnation in another star system.
Again, this book contains scenes familiar to anyone on the left. One scene describes a peace demo in the 1980s: "The Spartacist, a scrawny lad in a knit cap and lumber jacket, saw Reid and turned like a locking-on radar: 'Comrade', he began, stepping forward and moving a bundle of papers into combat position.
"'Oh, piss off', Reid said, barely glancing at him."
The Cassini Division, the third novel in the sequence, is set further into the future, where the left has left Earth altogether and founded the Solar Union in the orbit of Jupiter, a space-bound socialist federation, while Earth has gone backwards, and the capitalists have moved by worm hole to another star system.
The Sky Road covers some of the same ground as The Stone Canal, only through the eyes of a different character. McLeod's latest book, Cosmonaut Keep, is set in a slightly different future, with the same overall theme.
It is the first three novels, however, that are the most political. They are similar, also, to the Culture novels of Iain Banks, which depict a high-tech socialist utopia centuries hence. This is all proof that not all science fiction is reactionary like Star Wars and Starship Troopers.
[From the Scottish socialist magazine, Frontline, <http://www.redflag.org.uk>.]